Thursday, June 2, 2011

It been nearly six weeks since I released Blackmarsh. So how is it doing? The primary goal of Blackmarsh was to release a setting that is completely under the OGL. What little expenses I incurred would be recouped by the profits on the sale of the books.

So far there are over 1032 download of Blackmarsh and the current pace of 5 to 6 copies a day shows no signs of abating.

I sold 45 copies of the Blackmarsh book which more than recouped my minimal costs (art). The ratio of 45 books sold against 1032 downloads does seem a little discouraging but after talking to some of the retro-clone authors, ratio would be typical of anybody doing a OGL PDF/Commerical Print project of general interest.

One welcome side effect is what appears to be a 33% increase in sales of Majestic Wilderlands. I sold 26 copies in the last six weeks compared to selling 26 for the entire 1st quarter of 2011.

Since Blackmarsh is clearly an OSR product and not a rule book, the number of downloads may prove interesting as to the current size of the market for older editions.

I want to thank Tim, Dwayne, Rusty Battleaxe, John Adams and everybody else who helped with this project. And most of all to everybody who bought or downloaded a copy. Also since my last Blackmarsh report Akrasia posted a review. Appreciate the kind words there.

As for future planes for Blackmarsh, the only thing on the plate is adding Swords & Wizardry to the list of supported system. It doesn't mean much changes in the the text, Blackmarsh is statless but reinforces the idea that Blackmarsh is usable with all older editions.

If nobody picks up on the OGL material, I may do an expansion of my own later in the years. For now I am content to see what people do with it while I work on Scourge of the Demon Wolf, and the How to Make and Manage Fantasy Sandbox book.

Bat in the Attic Games

How to make a Sandbox

The Old School Renaissance

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

What are RPGs?

A game where the players play individual characters interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Rules are an aide to help the referee adjudicate actions and to help the players interact with the setting.

Dice are used to inject uncertainty which make a tabletop RPG campaign more interesting than "Let's Pretend".

The only thing a player needs to do to roleplay a character is to act if he or she was really there in the setting in that situation.